


stars meant for chasing

by laikaspeaks



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Body Language, Dragon Riders, Dragons, Dragonspeak, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Sequel, Unofficial Sequel, honestly I don't even know what to tag this, original characters ahoy, this is an important tag update: help this fic is killing me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2018-08-22 23:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8305987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laikaspeaks/pseuds/laikaspeaks
Summary: Snorri Stone-Eyes grew up on legends of the Dragonheart - the man who was not a man, the breaker-of-chains that broke the trap of his skin and became a dragon. As the old stories tell it, rather than be parted by death Dragonheart and his soulmate simply spread their wings and became one great dragon among the stars. She isn't a hero of legend, just an adopted child of a healer. Her well ordered world has no room for men who become dragons or the siren song of adventure. Snorri has even less room for the mischievous Changewing that the village children dubbed Peekaboo.Until death comes creeping for the lord of dragons and the winds of change are whipped into a storm.





	1. my heart is painted on these walls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leletha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leletha/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Nightfall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1912266) by [Leletha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leletha/pseuds/Leletha). 



Snorri’s fingers curled into a narrow handhold and she hauled herself one more step up the cliff face with a grunt, bare toes curling around roots and rocks for purchase. There were no ropes or carved handholds to make the job easier, only her own strength and wits. Her long arms and strong shoulders were well suited to the task just as everything about her was suited to this barren place. Her face was all harsh angles as if hewn by an ax, cheeks whipped coarse and flushed by the wind. Her broad shoulders and narrow hips didn't invoke grace except in the sinewy power of a hunter. Not beautiful, perhaps, but eye catching in the way the glaciers that lingered on the dark northern waters caught and held attention. Every so often her work-rough fingers dipped into a cup in the rocks and returned with a sharply tapered egg. These she deposited in a basket woven from reeds, lined with grass and wool. Gull eggs were harder to gather than the ones laid in the coop tucked against the back of their cottage, but they were delicious. A few dozen would usually fetch a bit of cheese or grain at market if she were inclined to make the journey by boat.

Gulls wheeled over the water and screamed their defiance at the nest thief, rushing close again and again to buffet her with their wings and claws, but she paid them no mind. Her shoulders and neck were protected by a thick, dark pelt, and from a distance she surely looked like a strange bear harried by stranger bees. Only when the basket was full did she make the rest of the laborious climb to a ledge that jutted far out from the stone. There she crouched on the edge to tie the cloth inner lining of the basket shut.

Her eyes, however, weren’t focused on what her hands were doing. If she squinted she could just make out the shore of the main island through the fog that settled on the channel during the cooler hours of the false-morning. The entire outer edge was dotted with the bright, rounded roofs crowned by carved dragon heads that breathed plumes of smoke into the pale sky. When she breathed deeply she could taste acrid woodsmoke on the sweet ocean breeze. Their own tiny island was almost a rock in comparison, all twisted trees and ragged, scrubby underbrush. Still it was home, and she knew every inch of it like the back of her hand. The wind picked up and plucked playfully at the end of her golden braid as if to tug her out of her observation, and she leaned into it with grey eyes sliding closed as if the wind were the hands of her mother.

Of course her peace rarely lasted long.

She scarcely had time to react before a red snout burst into visibility out of thin air, snatching up the basket and bobbing away. A slim red dragon snickered with her eyes as she pranced just out of Snorri’s reach, wings flaring with victory. The leaf-shaped spines that ran down her back flared too, and the long tendrils that ran from the back of her head like the antenna of a great insect twisted and whipped against the air.

Snorri hissed _irritation impatience_ , closely followed by “Peekaboo you -” The hissed and spat insults were about as close as she could get to cursing like one of the traders from Berk. The girl had not grown up truly immersed among dragons like heroes of legend, nor even in the way of the Riders of Berk, most of whom could switch between the two easy as breathing. Snorri was not quite fluent, but it was enough that Peekaboo could know all the bright complexities of her rage. She scrambled up the last few yards of the cliff face almost carelessly, devolving into cursing and spitting each time the dragon yanked the basket out of reach. Snorri wished for her spear. She would give the trouble making changewing such a whacking!

Peekaboo lifted her head as if she were above the tone Snorri was using, her backswept crest rippling orange and yellow with the occasional burst of anger-red. The dragon was a favorite among the village children, and eagerly took part in their games of chase and hide-and-seek, but her presence was nothing but a torment to Snorri.

They had been rivals for years, though the girl couldn’t pinpoint a reason and the dragon had no words to explain. What she did recognize was the basket crushed between unforgiving jaws just as she reached the top, yolk slopping between sharp teeth and splattering on the dark stone. The dragon bounced out of the way of a swung fist yelping with laughter, snapping tail and narrowed eyes giving _amusement_ a cruel edge. The basket toppled over the side of the cliff and the changewing drifted off on the breeze, leaving Snorri shouting after her from the cliffs.

The girl sighed and grumbled to herself, pale fingers curling against the stone lashed smooth by wind and rain. Her stomach rumbled in protest at the food lost, and though she could easily pull something from their stores she didn’t dare this early in the spring. The late season storms could still crush them under their weight. Fortunately the sea itself answered her - there was a flash of movement in the corner of her eye: a school of fish swimming in the deep water at the base of the cliff. Snorri grinned to herself as she shrugged off her thick fur cloak and tugged a knife from her belt. Her quarrel with Peekaboo was already forgotten in favor of this new opportunity, for she had neither the time nor inclination to sulk with her stomach rumbling like a hungry dragon. Time to go fishing.

She crowed aloud as she flung herself from the cliff, flying straight and clear as a spear with the wind rushing past like a caress like an embrace like _exhilaration._

* * *

 

Snorri’s bare feet barely registered the cold, packed earth of the path - her eyes were busy tracing its winding curves, running ahead to the little cottage perched on the cliffs above. It was squat and round-roofed, with the rearing head of a dragon for a chimney and outspread wings painted on the roof in red and yellow. The outer walls were brilliant blue, which was Snorri’s favorite color because it reminded her of the warmest days of summer. That was when all the little flowers bloomed in the fields, their heads bobbing heavy with pollen, and the bees hummed their sweet warm-weather-songs in her head.

The door swings open on well-greased hinges, and Snorri is hit with the scent of home. Herbs hung from the ceiling to dry fill the air with their sharp, bitter smell, and there’s the smooth almost-taste of the beeswax they use to seal wood against the damp, the golden dust of hay bedding and above all else the familiar smell of herself and her only family in this world.

Her hands instinctively went to the wood of the door, callused fingers finding the places where it was worn by many hands. According to her mother, once many people had lived crowded together on this jutting ridge of an island - the loft held several beds, and out back there were the foundations of long-gone houses laid out in stone. Of course, these days the only people who lived here were Snorri herself and her mother. And the occasional pack of Terrible Terrors that swooped from their hidden roosts to chatter _want want want_ over her daily catch.

Snorri had spent well over an hour crosslegged on a rock outcropping while she cleaned her catch, cooing back _affection_ -words as she fed them their share of the innards and the heads. Strictly speaking she wasn’t supposed to give them scraps, but it was difficult to resist their big eyes and the way they tucked under her chin or ducked under her hands for scratches. It turned into a splashing-game at the water’s edge that ended when she heard a horn summoning her from the house perched high above. The Terrors had scattered, knowing she wouldn't stay for long after she was called. 

The string of fish was whisked from her hands almost before she could blink, her mother’s thin hands separating out flesh and bone with quick motions of a slim knife. There were no words either in thanks or a scolding for the water dripping from her long hair. Snorri fell into rhythm easily as breathing: preparing a few of their remaining vegetables and throwing them in a pot, stoking the fire and sharpening knives and a dozen other tiny chores that kept their kitchen running smoothly. All this accompanied by an affectionate bump of hips, shoulders, or elbows, like cats meeting again after one has been long sharing the viking ships at sea. For a moment she was at peace again.

* * *

 

Soon after they ate it was time to sleep again. There was no day or night this time of year in the far north, only the times when she was tired and the times she was awake. There was only so much mending and carving and preparing herbs they could do. It was better to curl up together under piles of furs and wait for a better season.

Their bed was a simple raised platform hewn from solid pieces of wood with axe and chisel, fitted together solid with a hammer and finally lashed with twine. Simple but strong, like so much of the construction the vikings favored. There were of course, piles of soft cured hides from sheep and yak, and even a sleek, spotted grey pelt that was a particular favorite of Snorri’s. The trader had told her that it came from a water-dog, whatever that meant.

She gathered that one close to her chest the way a child would a stuffed toy and burrowed under her mother’s chin with a deep sigh. She was weary. Not just tired but feeling worn thin. There was something that scratched inside Snorri to get out, telling her take the little faering she used for fishing and go far, far until she reached the place where the sky and the horizon met. Snorri’s gaze wandered to the painted starry sky over their bed, from when she was far younger and snatched blues and golds leftover from repainting the cottage when the wind and sun faded the colors.

She could pick out the constellation known simply as _One,_ with its nose pointed north, the largest star in the constellation nestled between the outlined wings of a single dragon. Its nose pointed to the fixed star that lead them when the land fell away and there was only water and sky. Below that one was  _Stormrider,_ breathing a cascade of stars with great talons open wide. There was _Guardian_ with his great shield raised against an unseen enemy, and _The Deceiver_ that was called such more for the fact that the grouping of stars moved strangely in the night sky than because it resembled its name. Vikings wrote their stories in the stars, and Snorri knew these and many more from long winters and brief, fickle springs spent indoors around a roaring fire.

“Mother”, she murmured, voice husky with long silence, “will you tell me about the dragonheart?”

Any other day her mother would have scolded her for behaving like such a child. She was too old for hearing stories before bed, particularly fairytales. At the same time, she just turned fifteen today. She had asked for nothing but a story. In truth the girl probably knew the words by heart by now, but there was a comfort in the telling and the hearing. Asta hummed a quiet, comforting sound as she gathered her thoughts. The waves on the rocks rushed slowly in and out, bearing the familiar words closer like a ship on the tide. “Long ago, when my own grandmother’s mother was not yet born, a woman gave birth to a child who was not long for this world. The poor lamb could scarcely breathe…”

Snorri drifted off. Borne on the wings of dragons to the land of sleep, far from the cold of Dragon’s Edge and the constant itch under her skin like she wasn’t exactly where she was supposed to be.

* * *

 

Peekaboo - who was _jump-scare_ in the tongue of dragons - curled up on her favorite perch, a deep cleft in the cliff sheltered by a half-fallen tree that still grew thick, sheltering branches. The dragon sheltered there on nights when she lingered too long and the sun dipped below the horizon before she realized. It was warm enough, and she had long since packed the ledge with bits of moss and smooth stones, but it wasn’t the same as the _warm dim rustle_ of the nest, safe under the watchful gaze of the Alpha.

It wasn’t the nest, but there was the girl. From the first glance, _jump-scare_ was drawn back strong as if the Alpha commanded it. She’d struggled through the air on young flailing wings to come back, to needle the girl again. _Look see me look look yes!_ Even the anger was better than being ignored, and the she-hatchling had been determined to ignore her. Often old fears tore at her and knocked her off course like strange winds, hissing that _stone-eyes_ would never answer her calls.

How the _stone-eyes hatchling_ had burned with anger when poked and prodded, as if she would spit her very heartfire at _Ppkkh_. No matter how the dragon chittered or pleaded - _mine mine mine want want please?_ \- the she would not be moved from the little house on the cliffs. Peekaboo had been on the receiving end of enough swats on the nose from the end of a hastily grabbed spear to know the girl would not come willingly.

Still there were days like this one, when all that was brushed away by the way the girl perched on the cliffs and leaned into the wind: head up, shoulders pulled back, as if lifting invisible wings to catch the wind and fly. No matter how _stone-eyes_ snapped her teeth and growled, she could not lie about her very nature. Peekaboo - who was also sometimes  _Ppkkh_ , and sometimes _jump-scare_ \- didn’t understand why _stone-eyes_  lied about her very own self, but humans were strange in this way. Perhaps she had caught that sickness from her human nestmates.

The dragon was far more patient than her playfulness implied, since all the best tricks took time and patience. She was willing to wait, especially when it came to this one. _Stone-eyes_ was the _waiting still_ when the egg drew close to hatching. _Ppkkh_ would wait, and play these flirting games. She would sing dragon-songs to the little nest on the cliffs. She would wait for her _stone-eyes waiting still storm coming_ to surrender. One day she would win this battle of wills, and the strange dragon in human skin would be hers alone.

* * *

 

Off to the far north where the ice was thick on the ground all year round and rose in spires to bite at the sky, the great king of all dragons shook his head like trying to get water out of his ears. Death, the monster that could be dodged and evaded but never forever, breathed its poison song in his ears.

The nest was wrapped in a whorling bubble of his ice, even when the sun burned hot and fierce as dragon fire, and not once in all his reign had the ice melted completely. Not in a thousand-thousand years. Under a midnight sun thenight air filled with deceptively small cracks and pops. Pallid sunlight poured through thin cracks in the glacier, spilling over his frost white face, and wherever the light touched his scales too cracked and split like wounds in the earth. All that escaped him was the gravelly groan of stone against the stone.

As one every dragon in the nest started to scream.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I'm probably gonna find like fifteen different things I need to fix when I wake up tomorrow, but for now just take this shit. This was heavily inspired by Leletha's Nightfall series, if "inspired" means I stole a shiny bauble and played around with it for a bit. I hope this will be taken for what it is: an expression of admiration for a series I enjoyed so much.


	2. I never knew that you could sing so softly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've pretty must been listening to Crywolf songs on repeat writing this. I'm surprised I'm not sick of them yet.

Snorri woke from a dream with a silent cry, fingers curled so tightly into the furs that even her arms ached. She gasped for air, almost unable to breathe around the fact the world was suddenly wrong. It was the same sick feeling she felt as a child when one of the small village boys tried to climb the sea-slick cliffs on a dare, and when they found him his legs and arms were bent at strange angles. His eyes had gazed empty at the sky and she knew her playmate was gone.

His mother had screamed and howled like the wind was howling now.

She scrubbed the tears from her face and slide out of bed, hissing at the feel of the ice-cold floor. Snorri tossed another log on the fire as she passed out of reflex, but she was headed for the bucket of water in the kitchen. The world outside the windows was blazingly bright though her body told her it was night, and even after fifteen years her instincts told her it was a strange thing.

That was when, somewhere under the grieving wind, she heard the scratching at the door.

Viking stories were full of enemies that called at the door in familiar voices and allies that smiled while their hands offered only poison. But Snorri couldn’t ignore the voice that rose over the storm, not in a thousand years. If only. She strode over in a few long steps and yanked the door open, and was met by the wind rushing through the door like water.

“Peekaboo.” She couldn’t hide the exasperation in her voice. “You’ll freeze out here.”

The dragon froze in mid-scream, fire still flickering between her jaws like an early blooming flower. Gold eyes gleamed down at her and Snorri’s chest ached with that dream-sickess again.

Peekaboo craned forward and plucked at Snorri’s shirt. _come here follow insistent us together_

Snorri stepped through the door and closed it behind her, only belatedly realizing that she hadn’t put on her boots. It was one thing to go barefoot yesterday, but this was today and the stones were so cold her bones ached in her feet. But a narrow head pressed against her chest, and she found she couldn’t bring herself to move.

Every one of the leaf-shaped spines that ran down Peekboo’s back stood on end quivering, her entire body coiled with nervous energy as if she might at any moment turn and start madly clawing out of her own scales. They weren’t friends, but it was so unlike the light hearted, vicious creature Snorri knew that she ran hand gently under that long, narrow snout. The fine scales under Peekaboo’s jaw were almost velvety soft, and warm with the fire of her heart. Her heart hammered like a great drum, barely confined by something so ephemeral as flesh. The dragon’s heart started to slow, and so did Snorri’s. The dream-sickness and the ache of the cold faded.

“Peekaboo.” Snorri tried gently. The dragon only trembled like a leaf, so Snorri tried again. _Ppkkh attention me look me_

Peekaboo took a deep breath, then lifted her chin and spread her wings slightly, as if ready to spring into the air. Declaring her resolution, her will to fight. That didn’t really prepare  Snorri for the tail sneaking around behind her and winding around her waist, giving a firm tug that jerked her off her feet.

Her scream was lost to the wind as Peekaboo took off, struggling into the brewing storm with her burden in tow. The gale lashed her like an icy whip, cutting through her furs and flesh down to the bone. Peekaboo didn’t seem to notice her shouts, or when she tilted upside down in the tail’s grip. If she was sick after all that, it was between her and the sea.

They were far out from land before Peekaboo fumbled Snorri onto her back.

There was no mocking laughter, no invitation to fight - and lose - a wrestling match. Nothing. Just the long vine-like tendrils of Peekaboo’s antenna winding around Snorri’s waist and legs, holding her in place better than any saddle. Snorri lowered her body against the Changewing’s, half because she was desperate to draw heat from the dragon, half out of instinct. She had been riding dragons her whole life. She knew the way to turn, the way to shift and twist just so.

The main difference was that it was Peekaboo, who as far as Snorri knew had never borne a rider. The dragon had no compunctions about wheeling far left or right, sometimes nearly looping upside down to follow the currents of the wind. If Snorri’s shout of elation was snatched away by the storm, if her heart sang so that she felt she could leap from Peekaboo’s back and not fall… well, that was not for the dragon to know.

She almost forgot to wonder where they were going.

* * *

 

At least until they glided down into an open-topped mountain, and lighted before the largest dragon Snorri had ever seen. A nest as the old stories described, but it was empty and silent, with nests empty and various items abandoned on the ground. Like a graveyard of ships, but for the great beast that listed against the wall, massive head propped on the same platform where they stood. His tusks curled large and white as the moon, his mane of spines glinting in the unforgiving sun.

Her hands gripped Peekaboo’s horns to still their trembling, until Peekaboo’s grip released her and she slid off the dragon’s back at subtle prodding from her kidnapper’s tail.

Suddenly ice chip eyes flicked down toward them, and Snorri cried out with unreasoning fear. She was but a mote of light on the edge of a vast darkness. He had cut away his dragons and flung them to the sky so that they would not have to endure it, and she realized with a flash of terror, so that their fires would not gutter out in the face of this dark storm. Snorri could only bite her lip to contain another cry that rattled in her throat.

**Urgent**

Snorri was flooded with visions in a way she abruptly knew he would never do for a lesser cause. He was apologetic, but they must see and know before death pounced.

**Listen**

She saw _him_. The dragonheart. Not as humans or even other dragons saw him, but as the great king in the north saw all his subjects - down to the essence of themselves.

If there was ever another who understood the depth and breadth of dragonkind the way that he did it was _Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss._ The dragonheart. The two flitted through his mind’s eye as one fire, a memory burning brighter than any other. He was a good king, an impartial king, but Snorri realized that if dragons had heirs they would have been his, were their souls not called to the surf and the sun and the distant horizon. They were unexpected and wonderful as so few things were to one so old that life lost all sweet strangeness.

In the alpha’s mind, she could feel the comparison between her and the dragonheart. Identical material formed in radically different ways, in the same way clay dug from a riverbank could produce many different tools and vessels. They were unique, even if by nature they should have been the same. The revelation was like a badly broken bone snapping back into place. All the years of her life put back into order, the mysteries revealed and given name. It was true, and she couldn't deny what her heart had always known.

**Change**

That was why she and _Ppkkh_ could still hear his voice. They were here to - to - it was a concept she couldn’t quite grasp. To help him, she could understand that much.

For those who believed in fate, this might be the duty she was born to carry. For Snorri, who stood under the eyes of the great lord of dragons and was _known_ , there was a more horrible truth. This was a duty she could set aside. The lord of dragons was a good ruler, the kind that was rare among men and dragons both. She could deny her birthright and his plea, and leave this place in peace, and never think on it again all the days of her life.

In all those years of ignoring the call of the skies, she had feared this most of all. This was her choice alone, for good or ill.

**Comfort**

Snorri’s eyes shot up to meet the great dragon’s, and she saw compassion reflected there. Even cracked and wounded and unbearably tired the lord of dragons wasn’t desperate or cruel. He understood what he asked, she realized like the sick of an unexpected fall, perhaps better than anyone. Even better than _Ppkkh_ , who claimed to be her heartmate.

There was terror in being unmade, in being reborn. She was on the edge of understanding what he wanted, but his sides heaved as if he had run hard and far, as if death nipped on his heels.

**Us Together**

She knew now why he had chosen them, chosen _her_ , even beyond their resemblance to another dear to his heart. Together they would be reborn. This was not a journey either of them would make alone.

Snorri didn’t understand what he meant, but whatever else she was or was not, she was the child of a healer. Snorri had comforted the dying in their final hours, viking and dragon both. Inside she gathered her determination to herself with shaking hands.

Then Snorri took a deep breath and rose to her feet, tugging her cloak from the protesting plucking of Peekaboo’s teeth. She forced her feet forward, one step after another, still-bare feet aching against the cold, cold stone. She raised a hand and hesitated once, twice, before she spread her too-coarse fingers against the base of one of those great tusks. She was too small, there was no way he could have felt it. Yet great blue eyes slid closed, a guttural purr rumbling up her arm and shaking her to the bone.

 _together together_ she trilled gently to the fallen giant, and she didn’t need to look know that Peekaboo was edging closer. Out of the corner of her eye she could see red hide dulled to grey with grief, broken with little tight bursts of purple anxiety. Snorri felt a soft muzzle rub up against her cheek with the softest rasp of fangs, humming of comfort and togetherness, a song of all the things they weren’t and perhaps would never be. Yet it still gave her the strength to keep standing in the face of the encroaching darkness. Perhaps that would be enough. Perhaps they would be enough.

 _comfort you good you us together_ Snorri tried again, even as her throat grew tight. Only the god of tricks would find this fate funny. The dragonheart bent the world itself and became a dragon, but he was an impossible thing. She was only a girl, and if she wasn’t that then what was she? She slid to her knees from wild grief for things she didn’t understand. The sounds came sibilant and fluid, shedding the false labored pauses as she wouldn’t admit she added before this moment. _gentle hush you warm sleep soft sleep_

Dragons don’t cry, she thought as hot tears overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. She buried her face against the king’s scales with a sob, then sobbed harder at the tiny, faint _gratitude_ . The darkness approached in her mind’s eye, and as it did her face grew so cold that her tears were scalding. _gratitude_ , and the link was severed.

When she ran out of dragon-speech she repeated it again, and when that ran out she continued in Norse. She told him of the field near her home that was scrub in the winter but for the brief glorious summer was bristling with flowers. She spoke of the first time she jumped from the cliffs only to fall screaming like a child, and how her mother’s dragon-love scooped her from the air and they laughed together, and all the other small joys that she could remember. She could offer no more than her voice, so she kept speaking until her throat was raw.

Until the great king shuddered one final time, washing them both in the icy vapor of his last breath.   

Peekaboo quivered against her side, letting out little keens of grief that slowly rose in volume until she was shrieking with sadness and fear enough for both of them. Death was a sorrow but this was as if her good wings would no longer bear her in the sky.

The white scales splintered faster now, crumbling away like frost under the sun, faster and faster so that the eye couldn’t follow the unnatural decay. It was then that Snorri saw it through stinging eyes - a glittering, oblong shape half-embedded where his heartfire once burned in his chest. Peekaboo realized both what the object was and the danger at the same moment Snorri did. Echoes of the king’s thoughts were like a drum in her head, urging her on. Snorri leaped into motion.

_Trust, he had said, and she knew he was sincere._

She ran through the horrific, melting slurry, ignoring Peekaboo’s alarmed calls. She tripped, and her palms were covered with slick. She stumbled to her feet.

_Carry, he had asked, and she knew he was desperate._

Everything was a blur. All she could see was the egg. It glowed like the heart of a glacier. The most brilliant of all blues, the fire of the north itself.

_Go, he had begged, as the lord of dragons fell away and there was only a dying creature of flesh and blood._

She hadn’t understood, but now she did. Her fingers curled around the egg, and it was shockingly warm under her palms. That was the last thing she knew before the frost-flesh lurched beneath her feet, and she tumbled into the pit below.


	3. all good tales begin with dragons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even if there's an obvious setup for multiple chapters, I kinda just planned to get it out of my system in one go. It looks like there's a bit more to this story, so I ended up having to fiddle with the first chapter to get it to fit into an actual story. Once again this is by the seat of my pants, so feel free to let me know if I fucked up anywhere.

_Snorri Stone-Eyes was not born into the Hooligan clan, but that story begins with a dragon._

On good days Soft Grasses flew to the human nest to the south, taking long slow glides just to feel the wind eddy over his wings. Sometimes he would skim a few easy-pickings fish or jellyfish from the surface of the water. Always always he would look for a good perch for sunning. Preferably far away from the human hatchlings that thought it was a fine game to climb on his back and chirp _up up up._ Though that wasn’t so different from little dragons.

He would tolerate it if that happened, for no dragon of the flock would harm little cousins or hatchlings, but he would rather be left alone to sleep. That was why he favored his human. She answered when he called Ssta, but other dragons called her Good Paws, because she knitted together flesh and bone, and cured the rattling cough that made the heartfire flicker and fade. He was lucky she chose him as her companion over all others when she was very much loved by the flock.

Not the least because she had a glare that could make the little cousins scatter at fifty paces.

It was one such day that he found a boat. Boats, which in his mind were strange floating nests, weren’t generally empty and if they were they usually weren’t in the middle of the sea. The scent of dragon fire alone would have made him curious, but the reedy cries from inside the nest drew him inexorably forward. He sneaked slow and quiet, but there was still no movement. Only the anxious rocking of the ship, and the slow smouldering of the treelike thing where they humans pinned the pretend-wings that caught the wind.

After a long time the cries grew louder again, more insistent and easier to understand now that he was close - _hungry me cold me alone me_ \- and Soft Grasses could no more deny the calls than he could chew off his own limbs and become a snake.

There was a loud clatter that made him startle, but it was only his back paws kicking items scattered across the floor. After that he lifted his feet carefully, picking out clear areas of the floor as if he were stalking a wary rabbit. When he ducked under a fallen beam he cried out at a sharp tug on his horns, thrashing until he threw it from his shoulders. His breath licked between his fangs with alarm, until he spun to meet the foe. A hanging length of net that smelled strongly of fish. He made a sullen sound and snapped at the net until it was in pieces. This part of the story he wouldn’t tell.

The sounds came from inside a barrel, and when he peeked inside he saw the hatchling inside wrapped in thick red cloth to protect its small fire against the cold. It was pale, and round. Almost like the cubs of the water-dwellers that lived so far north that he only flew there once, when he was very young and his fire burned brighter.

A little paw patted at his snout, grey eyes clear and still alert. The hatchling was very small, and made only the tiny noises: _you you you happy me good you_

His small forelimbs weren’t meant for grabbing and holding, but the cloth made it simple enough to snag the fabric with his teeth and lift the hatchling out.  The humans protected their hatchlings with their long metal claws, and that was right. Dragons defended theirs with fire and fang, and that was also right. This - this was also right.

 **Come.** The command was so sudden and urgent that Soft Grasses nearly startled and dropped the hatchling. **Bring**.

It wasn’t far to the nest, but Soft Grasses still made small anxious sounds in his chest as he flew. Hatchlings this small didn’t normally leave the nest until their inner fires blazed strong. Humans had weak fires in them, if they had any at all. He flew faster than he ever had, wanting for the first time a fast wind instead of lazy breezes.

It seemed like many rising and setting suns before he lighted on an entrance to the nest, and also like the space between two heartbeats. This tunnel was rarely used, a little too difficult to traverse for dragons without strong legs like his, and thus one he preferred when he wanted sneak in with a particularly delicious fish.

He used his wings and tail as balance for his powerful legs as he lept from ledge to ledge, occasionally gliding for short distances over gaps in the stone or wide open chambers in the rock. It was nervous-making to be under the alpha’s gaze, which he felt even from this distance like a physical weight. It was rare that the great king’s attention fell so heavily - the touch of his mind was normally light as a breeze, not a burden but a joy.

He landed on a rock on the inner green space where the alpha waited. He was larger than any other dragon that Soft Grasses knew.  Wreathed in steam from the warm pools far below, he looked like one of the mountains that were too big to fly over. He spiraled slowly down on the rising heat, knowing he was being regarded from the corner of the alpha’s eye. Many eyes in the nest turned to him as he landed before the alpha, then gleamed with interest at what he had decided was worth bringing back to the nest.

The hatchling was smaller than the smallest of dragons, and Soft Grasses was reminded of the little _fading ones_ that came out of the egg half-made. It made him hunch close and spread his wings over the bundle. _No mine protect mine fierce_ as if the little thing were out of his own nest.

The only one didn’t retreat under his anxious rumble was Plays Alone, who was still learning to use her wings and feared nothing. She was a strange egg out-of-season, hatched when the sun hid its face for very long, and was only just learning the good warmth of the sun on her scales. Even for a hatchling she had been particularly indulged, which made her bold and rude.Yet even she tiptoed under his jaw, almost on her belly with her wings pulled tight against her back. She went so far as to roll over when he tilted his head to look at her fully.Her red scales darkened to subdued, rock-textured blue. _look look small me good me yes_

He chuffed out a dragon-laugh, which she took as permission to stretch her neck out and give a testing gentle poke at the bundle, head tilted to keep on eye on him and one eye on the bundle against his chest. When he didn’t react she rolled over to investigate more closely.

Once he was certain that the hatchling would be careful, Soft Grasses turned his attention to the alpha, who had waited patiently for his kin to settle.

**Ours**

Dragons were beings of the now and the almost-now. They did however, understand stories. Humans were bad at many things dragons were good at, but one thing they did well were what he called _long-rememberings_. Before only the Alphas who lived longer than any dragon but the lighting spitters, who only barely lived in their long sleep, would remember. There were dragon dances under each full moon, stories made of both Norse and the full-body pantomime the dragons favored. Enough was understood that even Soft Grasses understood the Alpha when he explained what the hatchling was, why he had been called to return with it.

He looked down at the two hatchlings curled together: one trilling the egg-songs that were for the not yet born; the other patting horns and snout and eyes indiscriminately with little paws. Two dragons.

**Weak**

The great king rumbled softly with regret. Soft Grasses was only a small dragon, but he knew that in that moment he and the alpha were thinking the same thought. This hatchling was too small, like the _fading ones_ that sometimes Ssta-who-was-also-Good Paws could breathe back to life. Dragons were good at many things humans were not, and even in coming out of the egg they were stronger and tougher.

The pained sound was so small only Plays Alone could have heard and understood. It wasn’t unusual for dragons to carry lost human hatchlings back to the human nests, but never one of their own. Not even the _fading ones_ stayed long.

 **Go**.

* * *

 

“Are you saying what I think you are? Please tell me you’re not saying what I think you are.” Brynja was the chief’s wife, once, and had taken up the post when her mate had fallen in battle. She had proven herself a woman of iron - no true viking from the Hooligan clan would follow a leader purely for whose bed she once shared. Even one as beautiful as Brynja once was, in the days before a raider’s sword left a craggy valley in the right side of her face. The ruin of her right eye meant she could never fight as well as she once had, but half of Brynja was more than enough to best most. With her dragon companion Crookedfang serving as her strong right eye, she was a great deal more than half. What was left of her beauty had faded since those distant years, but the bared blade of intelligence in her dark gaze hadn’t blunted one whit.

Asta Goodhand loved Brynja once and held it in her secret heart still, but in all other things Brynja knew her best. When Brynja was young and blazing with a warrior’s fire, Asta had followed her into battle more than any one warrior of Dragon’s Edge. It stung to be regarded as if she had gone mad and needed to be gentled. She didn’t like how it reduced her to a stuttering girl again.   

Asta looked down at the child in her arms while she tried to gather her thoughts. The little thing watched her with wide, curious eyes, taking everything in as if she knew she was being talked about. Solemn little creature - not a peep, smile, or giggle out of this one. Just that quiet gaze, a bit unsettling in a child that couldn’t be more than a year and certainly wasn’t over two. Asta had no idea how to answer the question, and looking always calm and certain was not currency only among chiefs. Healers, too, had their illusions.

“The gods are full of whims,” she said finally, not quite willing to meet her chief’s eyes. For all she trusted her lifelong companion Soft Grasses with everything in her, it was another thing to explain in clear Norse what sounded so _true_ in dragonspeak. The Prickleboggle was rarely invested enough in anything to be so certain. “It’s not beyond them to make beasts humans and humans beasts. Why not a dragon soul?”

One of their most beloved and retold legends were the adventures of a man who became a dragon. It almost didn’t matter how much of the stories were true. Peace with dragons - _all_ dragons, and not just the ones they grew up with - was rarely easy or simple. Everything from scuffles to rivalries to raids had waged between them at one time or another, but the story was always there reminding them that peace was possible. Whatever their differences, humans and dragons shared one heart, one soul.

They would never again war as they did in those times at the edge of memory.

“I believe it’s true.” She met Brynja’s one eye steadily, willing her to believe that the very human child in her arms was not.

Brynja held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away, running a hand through her salt-and-pepper mane. “I can’t. But we don’t turn away children, Asta. I’ll ask if someone is willing to take a fosterling.”

“She’s mine, Brynja,” the words sounded as well considered as they were, as firm in resolve as Asta was not, “I’ll raise her up. I was thinking to call her Snorri.”

A smile tugged at the edges of Brynja’s lips that didn’t know whether to be sad or pleased, and finally settled on bemused. “After your son?”

“That is the tradition, is it not?”

Brynja’s smile dropped at the frosty tone, and a little steel crept into hers. “Don’t turn that nettle tongue on me, Asta, you know a chief can’t believe in fairy stories.”

The gods were very real, as were the effects they had on the world, but not all stories were wholly true. Asta should have known Brynja wouldn’t believe. She was a smart woman with the vision to be a leader, but hers were practical visions. Strategies for trading for more iron for weapons or finessing her warriors into building a new barn were where her talents lay. Matters of the spirit weren’t of much concern to her, in the same way a dragon would perch as happily on a shrine to the ancestors as a furled mast.

Asta sighed. There was no point at shouting into the wind. “My apologies, Brynja. I lost my temper.”

“Asta,” Brynja laughed her name, and scarred knuckles nudged against her cheek to prompt her to raise her eyes once more, “If I didn’t forgive that, I would be struck by lightning for hypocrisy.”

“You would, you berserker. The gods themselves would descend to right the lie.”

The chief gently gathered the child - Snorri - from Asta’s arms, cradling the little thing against her chest with practiced ease. Asta decided to take the peace offering for what it was, even when Brynja lit up with a teasing grin. Perhaps especially then. “So Snorri, huh? I can see it. Those are warrior’s eyes.”

Prayers were dangerous things when one's gods were fickle and strange. Especially when the old stories overflowed into the real world. Yet Asta’s heart couldn’t help but whispering one, in the secret places where these things were kept. _Let this child be more fair-fated my son._


	4. the wounds i gave you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snorri and Peekaboo are left with an egg left behind by the king of dragons, and must face the storm within and without to survive.

Snorri woke with a groan, opening her eyes only briefly before closing them again against the jabbing pain of light. She lay there for a long moment, taking category of the various aches and pains - there was a deep ache in her arm that she didn’t want to look at yet, the burn of a wrenched shoulder, and the throbbing in her head. She almost didn’t register that she was tucked against a dragon’s side, rising and falling with their slow breathing. That wasn’t a strange thing. She was raised in Dragon’s Edge, and has spent much of her childhood tucked under Soft Grasses’ wings, or nuzzling up under Falls-Like-Lightning’s jaw.

What was strange was the acid bite that lurked under the familiar musk of dry scales.

The realization hit her like a staff to the head, and sent her reeling just as hard when she bolted upright. She gripped her head and groaned again, shuddering as her head swam and her stomach heaved. A big head nudged up into her arms, making her shoulder scream at being jostled. Her gasp drew out a quiet, apologetic sound from the dragon at her back. She was propped against Peekaboo’s broad side. The dragon’s slim neck snaked around her so that Peekaboo could nuzzle and croon and groom her hair with gently raking fangs.

Old resentment welled up, less like hot anger and more the sullen heat of embers under ash. Peekaboo always dragged others into her schemes and adventures, and was always _so apologetic_ when someone got hurt because of it. She was careless, and only sorry for as long as it took for wounds to heal and memories fade. Snorri had closed up enough accidental claw wounds and set enough broken legs to know all too well.

Peekaboo’s muzzle faded until it was all but invisible against her knee, and Snorri felt more than saw the gentle prod against her right forearm. _Sorry sorry don’t-want don’t-like okay you?_

Her forearm had the clear, deep imprint of Peekaboo’s fangs.

She remembered falling. Twisting in the air instinctively at Peekaboo’s _look at me_ call, and finding the dragon a breath away, ready to snag her from the air. She reached instinctively for harness straps, but her free hand scrabbled over bare scales. Peekaboo’s panicked scream was the last thing she could recall.

Her anger vanished as quickly as it came, leaving her chest a pit of shame that was quickly filling with gratitude. It was an unsettling feeling, leaving her plucking at the torn edges of her sleeve as if to cover the wound.

The sick feeling quickly returned when she remembered why she had been falling. Had she failed? Had she dropped it? Her shoulders drew into a painfully tense line, and she made a show of searching the ground around her _egg-mine worried where where where?_

She could have cried when Peekaboo leaned back, revealing the glint of gemlike blue between her forelegs. Of course it would be kept close to her chest. The heat from the volcanic pools escaped easily through the opening above, and a space which must have once been warm was clammy and cold. The egg wouldn’t have lasted an hour at these temperatures.

There was a reason this place was silent as a tomb.

Snorri pushed herself up on her hands and knees and wriggled up under Peekaboo’s front leg, curling up against the egg so that it was between her and the dragon’s chest. The sick tension in her gut relaxed. The lord of dragons held no sway in death; this was _her_ conviction. The egg was hers to protect. Relief dragged Snorri into fitful sleep, occasionally drifting awake enough to hear Peekaboo crooning soft egg-songs. Peekaboo told the egg the name of the nest, hummed of growth and strength. She held the cold and silence at bay… far stronger than Snorri had realized.

When Snorri finally emerged from sleep, her mouth was dry and sour, limbs heavy. Hunger gnawed at her empty gut. She felt more weak than when she went to sleep... maybe she just… need to rest some more…

That stung her into wakefulness, and she bolted upright, smacking Peekaboo on the snout to get the dragon to move her heavy head from her chest. The resulting whining only drew an eye roll as Snorri prodded the dragon back over the egg.

 _Wait_ , she held out her flattened hand, then made a firm downward motion, _don’t move - urgent._ A silent battle sign, one that even very young dragons knew was the firmest of directions. Though of course, the little ones didn’t always listen the way an adult dragon would. She held up her arm diagonally, bracing her body like a warrior blocking a blow with a shield: _Protect._ Snorri tried not to think about how the motion made her injured arm twinge.

Normally Snorri wouldn’t trust the dragon to do a single thing she said, and she could see in the way Peekaboo shifted in place she wasn’t wrong. But the egg kept Peekaboo pinned to the spot, wings scrunched to her back in clear reluctance. Even so Snorri turned and scrambled off over the rocks, checking cracks in the stone and scraped-out depressions of abandoned nests. There were many deep fissures and broad pits that were nothing more than shadows within shadows, but she was a child of the far north. The riders of Berk were known for their acrobatics and daring in battle, but Snorri’s kin were the strongest of climbers and swimmers and the most clever craftsmen. They lived half their lives in the cold dark. It held no terror for them.

Even so, with her injuries it was slow going. Snorri laughed out loud when she finally found a cache tucked into a little cave sheltered by close-spaced stalactites. Dragons of course weren’t craftsmen, but they did have a habit of hoarding things they found interesting or fun to play with. There were strips of old dry hide, fur and bone. A few shards of broken pottery. Even an armful of shredded leather. The remains of rabbit and deer, it seemed, and some unfortunate raider. She couldn’t tell from where - the design embossed on the hardened leather was scored by claws and fire.

She reached for her belt… and her hand met fabric. Snorri hissed a string of curses to herself. Count on Peekaboo to grab Snorri when her good knife and sewing kit were hanging on a hook back home.

Snorri cast about for an alternative. There were more than enough bones for an awl, and some of the hide was already basically in ribbons. Her eyes alighted on a shard of razor-sharp pottery and she smiled. She could work with that.

Her hands were stupid with the cold, her joints aching in her hands and feet as she worked. Only sheer stubbornness kept her there rather than running back to curl against Peekaboo’s side as she would with any other dragon. Instead she fumbled through the simple knots until she had a sturdy bag lined with shreds of uncured fur and dried moss.

There was even enough of a tattered deer hide left over to wind around her ankles and the arch of her foot, protecting the bottoms of her feet while leaving the toes bare for grip. It would have to be enough.

The way back was quicker now that she knew the pitfalls, but apparently not quick enough for Peekaboo. The dragon let out an angry-goose-honk as soon as she saw Snorri, her big wings fanning like a hatchling throwing a tantrum.

“I found what we need to get out of here.” She straightened as she reached the flat, open area, using her freed hands to hold up the makeshift bag. It was much like the carry-sacks her mother used to move hatchlings or eggs, with a thick outer layer of hide to protect them from the cold northern winds. _Ugly_ , but close enough. “We have to get back.”

Peekaboo huffed doubtfully, wings hunching over the nest.

“It’s too cold here.” Snorri gestured at the open roof of the nest, where the wind roared like a hungry beast. “We’ll freeze or starve waiting for it to hatch.’

The dragon’s scales settled into uneasy grey with little bursts of anxious purple. _No, no no, don’t-like don’t-want._

Snorri reached out her hand… and hesitated. She had no right to ask this. Not after all these years of avoiding the dragon, of pretending she didn’t know why she was being pursued with such single-minded focus. There were so many wounds between them, but… the dragon had willingly stood with her as the dragon king spoke his dying words. In the face of that she felt painfully childish, as if all her life she had been hiding under a blanket to keep monsters at bay.

She cupped her hands under the dragon’s jaw, smoothing her fingers against the soft scales. Even without claws it was an expression of trust that Peekaboo allowed it at all. Snorri nudged her forehead against Peekaboo’s jaw and earned her hair being ruffled in turn. Something unclenched in her chest. She had been in pain for long it settled into background noise. Until this moment. Until it was gone. 

They were friends once. S long ago that it was more sensation than memory. Hate burned brightest when it sprang from love, and oh... how they had both burned with it. Despite that, despite all the time that they lost... perhaps they could try again. Anything was possible now. 

 _heartmine_ , she stumbled over the emotion, strange and familiar as the sun after a long, long winter, _us-together, strong, brave._

Peekaboo pulled back with a startled snort, posture suspicious like testing the ground for traps. Snorri met her eyes without fear. There was no deception in her intentions, and no lie that she could tell with her entire body anyway.

The dragon lifted her eyes to the raging sky outside, and then looked back down at the egg gleaming on the unforgiving stone. Her every line was reluctant, but when she looked at Snorri again she was determined. _yes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's only been a thousand years since I wrote anything, so I'm just gonna enjoy the fact that I'm posting anything at all. Plotholes? Probably.


End file.
